Field of the Invention
The present invention is generally related to the area of retail commerce. Particularly, the present invention is related to method, system, and device for enabling micro-proximity location, detection and services.
Description of the Related Art
Modern smartphones typically incorporate a number of communications subsystems for location services. One exemplary incorporated subsystem uses the Global Positioning System (GPS) for basic outdoor location services. This GPS subsystem uses signals from multiple geo-stationary satellites to determine the longitude and latitude position of a smartphone. Such a technology is effective out-of-doors with an accuracy of plus or minus two meters, but loses accuracy inside of buildings as the building roof and structure scatters the satellite signals. The GPS solutions also rapidly deplete the battery life of the mobile phone due to the high power consumption used to satisfy the need for rapid updated measurements from the geo-stationary satellites as the user changes their location. While GPS is a solution for outdoor location services, there is a need for indoor location services.
Currently, the Wi-Fi signal strength between a smartphone and one or more Wi-Fi Access Points (AP) has been used in conjunction with a Global Position System (GPS) to determine the indoor location of the smartphone (the user thereof) within an establishment. By measuring received Wi-Fi signal strength of periodic broadcasts from the smartphone at each AP, Indoor Positioning System (IPS) software running on a Wi-Fi controller connected to each of the APs can triangulate on the location of the smartphone, achieving an position accuracy within plus or minus one meter. There are, however, several problems with this solution. In the GPS case, the application running on the smartphone is a module determining the location of the phone. In the Wi-Fi IPS case, the location information is being collected and tracked by an external processor. Getting information from the external processor to the smartphone can be problematic because it typically requires an affirmative action by the user with his/her smartphone. Such affirmative action might require the user to connect to a specific Wi-Fi network by a name identifier, or require the user to connect to a specific website, or require the user to open a specific application on the smartphone. In addition, the Wi-Fi IPS solution is relatively expensive to purchase, install, and operate since even the lowest-cost APs may cost from US$50 to $75 per AP, and each AP location is restricted to a location within the reach of electric outlet power since Wi-Fi APs cannot operate on limited battery power. Additionally, the Wi-Fi signals used for location-triangulation can be scattered and disrupted by fixtures and other movable structures within a building, and a radio phenomenon called multi-path, in which copies of the original Wi-Fi radio signal are created when the original signal is bouncing off interference from indoor structures such as walls and ceilings. All of these problems make triangulation accuracy below a couple of meters impossible. Thus there is another need for solutions to determine a fairly precise location indoor.
More recently a new technology for location and proximity services has been introduced, called “Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacons”, which overcome some of the problems with the Wi-Fi IPS. They are easier to install than Wi-Fi APs. Like GPS, a smartphone performs the location discovery so there is no need for a separate processor which is external to the smartphone, no need to get location information to the phone from another processor, and the solution scales to any number of smartphones. BLE beacons are also typically battery operated making their placement in an establishment easier. However, BLE beacons do suffer some problems. First, they are implemented using standard general-purpose Bluetooth Low-Energy integrated circuits available from vendors such as Texas Instruments and Nordic Semiconductor. As they are designed to meet the full range of Bluetooth specifications, they are quite overly sophisticated and costly devices.
Another technology incorporated into some smartphones that can enable and assist in providing location and proximity services is Near Field Communication (NFC). Unlike the Wi-Fi IPS or BLE beacons, NFC devices are typically passive and only operate based on power received from radio waves of a smart phone that physically touch or nearly-touch the NFC device. When a smartphone is placed within a millimeter or less to an NFC device, the device is activated and generates a near field radio frequency signal that the smartphone can read. NFC devices are often packaged as stickers that can be attached to movable structures or even directly to products. If a user touches the device with his smartphone, a resident app can read the information encoded in the device. NFC is also sometimes used to enable short communication directly between two smartphones, such as an exchange of photographs, when they “bump” or physically touch each other. Clearly, NFC can be used for precise location and proximity services, however, it always requires that the user take an action to place the smartphone physically against the device. Therefore, it cannot be used for passively locating a user within a radius of the device by either a mobile or fixed smartphone. In addition, passive NFC devices can only broadcast the same static content and therefore cannot be easily protected so that only specific targeted mobile applications on smartphones are allowed to read the NFC device static content. In other words, any third party smartphone application can easily read such NFC devices and generate unwanted content to be displayed to the user on the smartphone.
Still another technology that currently exists for indoor location and proximity services is Radio Frequency Identification (RFID). While these devices are inexpensive and can be incorporated into stickers or badges, they suffer from two major disadvantages. First, most smartphones are not equipped to read RFID tags while a typical mobile RFID reader may cost more than $1500 USD. Secondly, while fixed readers for automatically and remotely locating RFID devices do exist, they require a costly RF infrastructure consisting of deploying multiple RFID antennas that are connected, by coaxial cables, to a shared reader. This shared reader is responsible for periodically energizing the RFID devices within the range of a given antenna and then listening for their presence and relative distance. The cost of the antennas, shared reader and infrastructure can run to many thousands of US dollars per reader installation. Hence there are many applications for which RFID is not economically viable for indoor location and proximity services.